The moon was out when we set off. Barbus and the animal trainer amused us with stories of lion catches in different countries. They described it as something so simple that I and my friends, fired by the wine, sought to restrain them from taking too much part in our venture so that we might receive all the honor. This they willingly promised to do, assuring us that they sought only to help us with advice and with their experience, and that they themselves would keep well out of the way. As far as I was concerned, I had witnessed in the amphitheater with my own eyes how ingeniously an experienced band of men could capture a lion with a net and how easy it is for a man with two spears to kill one.
At dawn we came to the village we had heard about. The villagers were busy lighting their cooking fires. The rumor had been false, for the village was by no means terror-stricken. In fact, it was very proud of its lion. No other lion had been seen in the district within living memory. This one lived in a mountain cave nearby and had worn a path down to a stream. The previous night it had killed and eaten a goat the villagers had tied to a tree by the path so that their valuable cattle should not be taken. The lion had never attacked a human being. On the contrary, it used to make itself known by giving a couple of deep roars as it emerged from its cave. Nor was it a very demanding lion, for it contented itself, for lack of anything better, with eating carcasses, insofar as the jackals allowed it to. Furthermore, the villagers had already built a sturdy wooden cage in which they intended to convey the beast to Antioch and sell it. A lion captured with nets must be bound firmly as its limbs can be injured if one does not quickly put it in a cage and loosen the ropes.
When the villagers heard our plans, they were not at all pleased. Fortunately they had not yet had time to sell the lion, but when they realized our situation, they pressed us so hard that Barbus had to pay them two thousand sesterces for the lion and the cage. When the purchase was settled and the money counted, Barbus suddenly began to shiver all over and suggested that we should all get some sleep now and leave the capture of the lion until the following day. The people of Antioch would by then have had time to calm down after the scandal we had caused. But the animal trainer sensibly remarked that now was the right moment to drive the lion from the cave-in the morning when it had eaten and drunk its fill, was sluggish in its movements and dulled with sleep.
So Barbus and he put on the leather protectors and taking several men from the village, we rode off toward the mountain. They showed us the lion’s path and drinking place, large paw marks and a fresh heap of droppings. We could even smell the lion and our horses shied. As we slowly approached the lion’s lair, the scent became sharper and our horses trembled, rolled their eyes and refused to take another step forward, and we were forced to dismount and send the horses back. We continued on foot toward the cave until we heard the lion’s grumbling snores. It was snoring so loudly that the sound shook the ground beneath our feet. It is of course possible that the trembling was in our own legs, as we now approached a lion’s lair for the first time in our lives.
The villagers were not the least afraid of their own lion but assured us that it would sleep right on into the evening. They knew its habits well and swore that they had fed it up into such a sluggish and plump creature that our greatest difficulty would be in waking it and chasing it out into the open.
The lion had worn a broad path between the bushes outside the cave, and the steep rocky slopes on each side of it were so high that Barbus and the animal trainer could safely climb up and assist us with their good advice. They indicated how far we should stretch the heavy rope net in front of the cave and how three of us should hold on to each end of it. The seventh was to call and jump about behind the net so that the dazed lion, blinded by the sun, would rush out at him and thus plunge straight into the net. Then we were to wrap the net around the lion as many times as possible, making sure that we did not get within reach of its teeth and claws. When we considered the matter, we noticed that it was not quite so simple as they had made it out to be.
We sat down on the ground to decide which of us would wake the lion up from its sleep. Barbus suggested that it would be best to poke the animal with a spear shaft, just enough to irritate but not injure it. The animal trainer assured us that he would have liked to perform this little service for us but his knees were stiff with rheumatism and then too he did not want to deprive us of the honor.
My friends began to glance at me and assured me that as far as they were concerned, from sheer good nature they would relinquish the honor to me. I was the one who had thought up the plan, just as I had inveigled them into the capture of the Sabine women which had been the beginning of this adventure. With the acrid smell of lion in my nostrils, I reminded my friends with some force that I was my father’s only son. When we considered this matter further, five of us proved to be the only sons of their fathers. This fact may possibly explain our behavior. One of us had nothing but sisters and the youngest, Charisius, hastily explained that his only brother stammered and also suffered from other defects.
When Barbus saw that my friends were putting pressure on me and I should be forced to go whether I wanted to or not, he took a great gulp of wine from the jar, with a trembling voice called upon Hercules, and assured me that he loved me more than his own son, although he in fact had never had a son. The task was not suited to him, he said, but he, an old legionary veteran, was prepared to step down into the cleft in the rocks and awaken the lion. Should he lose his life because of his poor sight and weakened legs, he wished only that I should see to it that he had a fine funeral barge and that I should make a speech about him so that his many famous exploits would be known to all. By his death he would show that at least a part of all he had told me about his exploits over the years was true.
When he began to crawl down the slope with a spear in his hand even I weakened, and we embraced each other tenderly and wept together. I could not let an old man sacrifice his life for me and my mistakes. Instead, I bade him tell my father that at least I had met death like a man and this would perhaps atone for everything, for I had brought only misfortune to him from the time when my mother had died giving birth to me until now when, although with no evil intent, I had shamed his good name throughout Antioch.
Barbus demantled that I should at least take a few gulps of wine since, he assured me, nothing really hurts if one has enough wine in one’s stomach. I drank and made my friends swear that they would hold the net firmly and not let it go at any price. Then I gripped my spear with both hands, clenched my teeth and crept along the lion’s path through the cleft in the rocks. With the thunder of the lion’s snores in my ears, I made out its recumbent form in the cave. I waved the spear, heard the lion let out a roar, myself gave a yell and ran, more swiftly than I had ever done at an athletic competition, straight into the net, which my friends had hastily raised without waiting for me to jump over it.
As I struggled for my life in the meshes of the net, the lion came hesitantly and groaning out of its cave and stopped in surprise to look at me. It was such a huge and fearsome beast that my friends, unable to bear the sight of it, dropped the net and fled. The animal trainer bawled out his good advice and shouted that we must at once cast the net over the lion before it became used to the daylight, for otherwise it might turn dangerous.